You won't likely hear many tracks this year weirder or more unsettling than the first one on Luciano's Tribute to the Sun. Can you imagine sucking on a mouthful of pennies-- not just the taste of it, but also all the squirms and shudders that would come to pass? Does it make sense to describe a sound as "sour"? If that means anything, does it make such a sound in a dance track sound appealing? Like something worth savoring? Would it help or hurt to know that the sour-pennies part is just one of several parts that run concurrently for almost nine minutes, with some of the others being an anxiously pitched-up tribal chant and what might well be a dozen murderous kids clapping?
Luciano is a techno producer whose sound-world is uncommonly vast and even more uncommonly fertile. In a realm where steely shades of gray compete for space within formalist grids, Luciano favors subtle washes of color. More than that, though, he plays the minimalist's game of placing sounds where they can grow. An evocative rustle here, a suggestive tap there-- something interesting will always happen in between such things if the conditions are made right.
They certainly are in "Los Niños de Fuera". That's the first track on Tribute to the Sun, and it works as both a functional charge and a wide-open statement of intent. As the distended vocal wail (the sour-penny part) duels with the handclap chant, the effect is simultaneously ghostly and bursting with life-- something both exotic and immediately identifiable. It's as good an encapsulation of Luciano's aesthetic as anything he has done.
The whole album makes good on the wide spread of Luciano's sound, which shares a lot with the lilting experimentalism of Ricardo Villalobos and so many others tracing techno lines these days between South America and Europe. (Luciano has roots in Chile and a home in Switzerland.) "Celestial" follows the album-opener with a percussive mix of hand-drum runs and minimal house beats that scan as South American for all their airy, woody timbres and especially their patience. They're also trademark Luciano in the way they're haunted by a humid bass-line that seems to be humming to itself when not distracted to silence by something happening out of ear-shot.
Tracks like "Conspirer" and "Hang for Bruno" take mellow forays through melodic passes, the latter with a gorgeous quasi-trumpet sound that would've worked on Miles Davis and Gil Evans' Sketches of Spain. But it's the dance tracks that prove most striking. "Africa Sweat" features vocals by Senegalese singer Ali Boulo Santo and an awful lot of touch, in the infectious rhythms as well as some subtle but wowing EQ-tweaks on the kora and drum sounds. The same subtlety plays into "Metodisima", which runs through an IDM egghead's store of rhythmic ideas while sounding effortless and contented. Much of Luciano's best handiwork on Tribute to the Sun works like that: It's easy to miss certain things in the rush or swell of the mood, but it's just as pleasing to go back and try to take stock of all that he's doing without making too big a show of it.
